Free Dream a Little Dream (The Silver Trilogy) (F) by Kerstin Gier Page B

my father’s girlfriend’s daughter. And obviously…” He paused for a moment, shooting me a nasty look. “Obviously I can’t stop thinking about her. I’m sorry I wrecked our ritual.”
    Arthur did not reply to that. He lowered his stick, put out his hand, and reached for a strand of my hair, then let it slide slowly along his fingers. I flinched away.
    “You really mean it?” asked Jasper. “Your dad’s girlfriend is a missionary?”
    Grayson sighed again.
    Henry was looking at me thoughtfully. “It really is a strange coincidence that she fell into the middle of our circle during the ritual, Grayson,” he said quietly as another flash of lightning lit up the sky.
    “Sorry,” said Grayson, with a remorseful shrug of his shoulders. “Maybe we ought to just start all over again.”
    “No need to apologize.” Arthur ran his thumb over the strand of my hair that he was holding. Normally I’d have rapped his knuckles, but for some reason I couldn’t move. This dream had clearly gone out of control. Any moment now, I realized, it would change into a nightmare. And I didn’t like that idea a bit.
    “I don’t believe in coincidences,” said Arthur.
    “Nor do I. Not since…” Jasper’s self-satisfied look had gone away. He looked anxious now instead. “Not since, well, you know what happened,” he finished quietly. “If you know her well, Grayson, all the better. Then it will be easier for us—”
    A mighty crash of thunder yet again. That did it. I had to do something before all this mystic playacting in the cemetery finally became a nightmare and my cousin the Lord of Shadows and Darkness emerged from the mist and struck me down with Lottie’s hatchet.
    “Take your paws off me, Gandalf,” I said firmly, snatching my hair away from Arthur’s fingers. “All this stuff is extremely interesting, but now I really have to go. I’m not supposed to be out in a thunderstorm.” I meant that to sound casual, but sad to say, it didn’t. Even Jasper, dim as he was, had to realize that I was frightened.
    Only then did I notice how tall they all were. Over six feet, every one of them, and as I watched them they seemed to be growing taller every second.
    Lightning bathed the cemetery in glaring light. I swallowed. The outer flames of the pentagram were flaring up again, and out of the corner of my eye it looked as if the drifting mists in the dark were growing arms and legs.…
    “I’m warning you, I can do kung fu,” I said. An even mightier roll of thunder followed my words, the ground shook again, and I lost my balance and fell over.
    “Ouch,” I said out loud, rubbing my hip bones. My feline powers of vision were gone in an instant. I’d landed on a hard marble floor. Somewhere to the left, I saw a small, formless something in the dim light. I groped for it and held it before my eyes. It was one of Mrs. Finchley’s stupid, grinning ballerinas. I had pushed it under my bed so that I didn’t have to keep looking at it. But now I was amazingly glad to see its blurred shape in front of me.
    I was awake.
    Thank heavens.

 
    9
    “PUT LOTTIE’S IPAD DOWN, LIV,” said my mother. “You know perfectly well that I won’t have that sort of thing at meals.”
    “I have to look something up for school. If I had a smartphone like everyone else, I’d have done it long ago.” Much to our annoyance, Mia and I only had ancient, clunky cell phones for emergencies, obsolete SIM-card models passed on from our father. Useless and embarrassing.
    I entered “sub umbra floreo” into the search field.
    “Latin?” asked Mom, who could obviously read at a distance better than I’d expected. “What subject do you need that for?”
    “For … er…” The search engine was spewing out any number of hits. I let my finger run down them. Sub umbra floreo —“I flower in the shade.” The inscription was part of the coat of arms of Belize. Hmm. “Geography,” I said. “Where exactly is Belize?”
    “In